Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Absolute composure

Enjoyed this podcast on chic nihilism and how a Zero Books book wound up on Jay-Z's back.

Found this quote from Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (as quoted by theorist Simon Critchley) illuminating, particularly as it seems to relate to Twitter:

"We base our conduct on what we recognize as useful... the most useful thing we can do is to repudiate - and so we repudiate. We repudiate everything with indescribable composure"

UPDATE: Glenn Beck somehow picked up on this, although his listening apprehension is apparent sub-Regents level. Hilariously, he suggests that conservatives need to subtly influence culture like Jay-Z's costume designer did (missing the whole point that this was a largely accidental memetic slip).

To which, the obvious reply is that: conservative/hegemonic/neoliberal discourse is already pre-baked into just about every cultural artifact. Or as Zizek might say: